A roadmap of electronics apps

[trh01uk]

Awareness of my ignorance on so many topics is greadually creeping up on me. Asking questions on google shows that many such questions - in the electronics history field - get asked - and answered - on this forum.

My question in this case is: "Where can I find information that defines when the various electronics applications (that now exist) got off the ground in fully working systems?" One can broaden the question to ask when they started in the UK - or in other countries.

By "electronics applications" I am referring to grouping of products into classes that do roughly the same thing. For instance, we could list:

• Broadcast radio receivers
• 2-way radio transceivers
• oscilloscopes
• mine detectors
• radar
• radio navigation
• radio altimeters
• signal generators
• sound recording
• wavemeters
• etc...

My list is very far from complete. And for any one category, it can be broken down further. Broadcast radio receivers might be broken down into AM types, FM types and DAB types for instance. And you might want to differentiate further by separating TRF designs from superhets. Sound recording might be broken down into wire types, tape types and NVRAM types (I exclude cylinders etc as not being "electronic").

I am also differentiating between the inital patent or "germ of an idea" - and it really taking off in working (and available) products. The history of radar illustrates this rather well. The concept of radar was put forward as early as 1903 by Hulsmeyer in Germany. By 1904 he put on a public demonstration of working equipment. But the system went nowhere - probably for commercial rather than technical reasons.

Working radar systems seems to have started more or less simultaneously in UK, Germany, USSR and USA (and other places) in the early 1930s.

Radar is fairly easy to document, and there are numerous articles on it around the net. Other areas are less easy. For instance, hyperbolic radionavigation - now demonstrated in the ubiquitous "sat-nav" - appears to have first sprung out of the woodwork with Dippy's GEE system in 1940. I've read that the Americans had a similar system working, but when they saw Dippy's system demonstrated, they regarded it as so good they abandoned theirs, and adopted GEE.

But if we broaden the question of radio navigation, before hyperbolic systems we had radio direction finding. What was the first working DF system? And related to that - who produced the first radio compass?

When we start asking about test equipment, it is also surprisingly hard to pin down when items we now regard as "every day" - such as scopes and sig gens - first became available. I imagine the first sig gens were knocked up by designers of the time - presumably as soon as valves with gain became available?

I make a point of asking veteran engineers how they did their design work. And how they tested their designs. I was fascinated to hear from the designer of early VHF transceivers in the UK (around 1940) that he had no VHF wavemeters available to get his kit on to the right frequency. So he strung an open-wire feeder across his lab, fed the Tx into it, and looked for standing wave minima with a small torch bulb. He then got out his ruler to measure the wavelength......

What I would like to produce - ultimately - is a roadmap or timeline - showing when (and where) each major application area got going. Maybe someone has already done this?


Richard

[Radio Wrangler]

Probably none of those questions have unique answers and different nations all hold different people (their own citizens of course) responsible for various inventions.

They had Lecher lines long before 1940 and similar physical ways of measuring frequency/wavelength. Otherwise who could know what wavelength anything was on?

David

[dseymo1]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Probably none of those questions have unique answers and different nations all hold different people (their own citizens of course) responsible for various inventions.

Indeed, according to the Russians, almost all technological innovation was due to Popov!

There were also those ahead of their time: wireless telegraphy was demonstrated by Tesla long before Marconi's developments.

[Station X]

Indeed, according to the Russians, almost all technological innovation was due to Popov!

I have visited science museums in Russia and they claim to have invented everything apart from the steam engine, which they credit to James Watt, even though he didn't invent it.

[trh01uk]

While agreeing that claims of who first comes up with an idea is often hotly contested, I was asking a slightly different question. And I am not really that interested in individuals as such. I was looking to try and work out when different electronics technologies actually got off the ground - in the form of working systems that were made in more than one-offs.

Radar illustrates that rather well, with Hulsmeyer inventing in 1903, providing a demo in 1904, but it then going completely dead for a couple of decades. As far as I am concerned radar really got off the ground in the early to mid 1930s.

Broadcast receivers didn't start until there was some broadcasting going on, so there was something to listen to. So in the UK, that would be November 1922, I believe, though I don't know how soon after you could go out and buy a receiver.

But those are the easy cases. If you ask "when could a (well-off) lab first go out and buy an oscilloscope?", articles like this one on Wikipedia are not at all clear. The implication is that a few experimental models were knocked up by 1919, but then it says the first commercial double-beam oscilloscope was developed by Cossor in 1939. The implication is that single beam scopes were available before that.......but it doesn't say so. And 20 years seems a long gap between a few bench experiments and production models.

But perhaps there really were no commercial scopes before 1939 - because there was really very little "electronics" that required their use? (Scopes aren't really the instrument of choice for working on broadcast receivers for instance)

Richard

[trh01uk]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

They had Lecher lines long before 1940 and similar physical ways of measuring frequency/wavelength. Otherwise who could know what wavelength anything was on?

David,

considering your second point, lecher lines are not very practical for long wavelengths - particularly if you want to do the measurement indoors! And much early radio work was at pretty low frequencies or long wavelengths. The example I quoted was for wavelengths of 4 to 6 metres in 1940.

I've always assumed that frequency was measured in the early days (when they really working sub 1Mc/s) by constructing standard capacitors and inductors, and using them to make up simple absorbtion wavemeters. Such early wavemeters do turn up occasionally on Ebay, and indeed I have one dated 1924. However, I haven't seen any documentary evidence that lecher lines were not used.


Richard

[Radio Wrangler]

Calculable capacitors are fairly straight-forward. Inductors, if coiled had a significant difficulty in assessing the efficiency of coupling between turns, But AC excited bridge technology was around. Very long waves were within reach of high speed alternators, and the rpm they ran at could be counted by gear trains and a clock.

Every measuring instrument raises the question of how in turn each was calibrated. Who turned the leadscrew for the first proper lathe? Who painted the handle of the first paintbrush, hammered the wedge in of the first hammer? I find it interesting how various technologies were booted up.

David

[Billy T]

Originally Posted by trh01uk

What I would like to produce - ultimately - is a roadmap or timeline - showing when (and where) each major application area got going. Maybe someone has already done this?

Let Google be your friend, and Wikipedia your mistress.

All that you seek can be found on-line...................

Cheers

Billy

[trh01uk]

David,

yes, nearly all quantities are derivatives of some basic units. I assume in the "M.K.S." system everything comes from length, mass and time. Not to say of course that such derivations aren't devilishly difficult in some cases.

I was really thinking of when instruments really became available as an off-the shelf item, rather than as a lab curiosity that someone knocked up from first principles. Test gear is after all itself a derivative of some other industry or requirement. No-one makes signal generators with no receivers or similar to use them on!

What I am trying to get at here is when the various branches of electronics actually found some useful purpose. Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention, but it seems to me its often the other way round. Radar clearly had several false starts - not just Hulsemeyer in Germany, but also a couple of guys at SEE (Butement & Pollard) described RDF detection of ships as early as 1930 (with a demo system on 600Mc/s), but still it went nowhere.

When it comes to measuring frequency, I have this statement on record:

General Radio published its first catalog of instruments in 1916. Among the products listed were a Precision Variable Air Condenser ($25.00), a Decade Resistance Box ($19.00), a Precision Variable Inductor ($24.00), and an Absorption Wavemeter ($60.00)

That detail comes from an interesting history of the company here.

The americans have always appeared to be ahead of the UK on electronics in general, so I am not sure you could buy anything of this kind in the UK. At least, I have found no evidence for it as early as 1916.

Richard

[trh01uk]

Originally Posted by Billy T

Let Google be your friend, and Wikipedia your mistress.

All that you seek can be found on-line...................

Billy,

well, those are good starting points, but when you start digging its actually hard to find clear answers. If, for instance, you ask "What was the first true radio transceiver?" (where a transceiver is a tx-rx with a single tuning knob to set both tx and rx frequency and which shares a common aerial), you will not find google of great help. Of course, it does depend on how you ask the question - but so far I have not been able to frame a question that even gets the answer I already have.

And the answer I already have is the British Army Wireless Set No.11 in the UK, around 1938. In Germany, I suspect they were considerably earlier - at least 1935 - and possibly before that, because they were busy arming themselves long before the UK woke up. It may be that a precise answer to this question is buried in Arthur Bauer's fabulous site (at http://www.cdvandt.org) - which I am currently reading my way through (it will take a while).

Similarly, if you ask when did diecast chassis first appear in electronics equipment, Lorenz in Germany came up with a diecast set in 1931 for use in the Amazon. The earliest equivalent I can find in the UK is the Wireless Set No.42, which was designed about 1943 at SEE/SRDE (bare details and pic at http://www.wftw.nl/wsets.html). (I have strong suspicion that the idea for the WS42 came from captured German radio equipment - but I can provide no evidence for that as the records are currently lost.)


Richard

[Radio Wrangler]

OK then, oscilloscopes for example. I think the first commercially successful one sold in volume was the Cossor 339 family 1939 onwards, bought for Radar research. The next waypoint might be calibrated graticules or DC coupling, but I think Howard Vollum's triggered timebase was the game changer. So the founding of Tek is the key.

I like G-R stuff. I'm using a General Radio trombone line at the moment for work-work. Built to be immortal. and GR874s are of beautiful elegance in design.

David

[G0HZU_JMR]

It's going to be very difficult to come up with anything definite in terms of dates because so much happened (across the world) between, say 1915 and 1940.

By the early 1940s the allied military had microwave link stuff operating at 4.7GHz with 8 TDM multiplexed channels that could act as an 8 channel (wireless) telephone exchange.

In terms of hobby technology before 1920 see below for an image of a radio amateur's 'lab'. This was taken from a book dated 1919.

[G0HZU_JMR]

Originally Posted by trh01uk

General Radio published its first catalog of instruments in 1916. Among the products listed were a Precision Variable Air Condenser ($25.00), a Decade Resistance Box ($19.00), a Precision Variable Inductor ($24.00), and an Absorption Wavemeter ($60.00)

The old (pre 1920) American radio ham book I have here has all the design theory on how to make a wavemeter and calibrate it.
Also how to measure antenna capacitance and inductance. Lots of tables and maths.

"The Wireless Experimenter's Manual" by Elmer Bucher 1920

Originally Posted by trh01uk

What was the first working DF system?

Also details and circuits of a WW1 DF system are shown in this old book!

There are some commercial receivers shown in there from 'Grebe'

[trh01uk]

Originally Posted by G0HZU_JMR

It's going to be very difficult to come up with anything definite in terms of dates because so much happened (across the world) between, say 1915 and 1940.

Jeremy,

yes, I am sure you are right about the difficulty of answering the question. I was just trying to see whether anyone else had also asked this sort of question - and found some answers....

Most people go for the description of an idea to claim a "first". I prefer to see ideas translated into real hardware (or software), and preferably a commercial product. If you can convince someone else to pay money for something, you can be pretty sure its an idea of some merit! Any professional engineer knows how much work there is in moving from a rough prototype (albeit working) to something you can sell.

Part of the problem of making claims for "firsts", is being quite clear what it is you are claiming for. On transceivers for instance, there are lots of bits of kit with separate tx and rx all in one box, which someone calls a "transceiver". By my definition, they don't qualify because they don't have the single tuning control architecture I referred to. It may seem a trivial distinction, but the difference it makes in operational terms is quite startling.

I take it when you refer to the wartime TDM equipment, you are thinking of the Wireless Set No.10? If so, then I regard that as a key milestone in wireless development. (Sad that only one (in the Royal Sigs Museum) appears to have survived.)

Richard

[trh01uk]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

OK then, oscilloscopes for example. I think the first commercially successful one sold in volume was the Cossor 339 family 1939 onwards, bought for Radar research. The next waypoint might be calibrated graticules or DC coupling, but I think Howard Vollum's triggered timebase was the game changer. So the founding of Tek is the key.

David,

I think you mean the Cossor 3339 - the 339 was a derivative made for the Services, I believe with more readily available valves.

The question has been asked before - in this thread for instance. That also comes up with the Cossor beast as the first for general purpose servicing in the UK. There is however reference to "lab instruments" being around before the Cossor one - though its unclear whether these were literally home-made by the lab concerned, or sold by some commercial company. No manufacturer stated.

If you go outside the UK, then as usual USA seemed to be ahead of us. I previously managed to turn up a RCA TMV-122 scope dated back to 1935.

The lack of scopes in the 30s points to a wider lack of anything needing them to test. As far as I can see, most "electronics" in the UK prior to 1935 was domestic wireless receivers. Very little else.

Richard

[G0HZU_JMR]

Yes it was the WS10 system from around 1944. An amazing bit of kit considering the age of it!

There are lots of free 'old' ebooks on openlibrary.org that date back around 100 years or so.

Here's one on direction finding from the early 1920s.
https://archive.org/stream/direction...e/n82/mode/2up

Here's a similar link to the 1920 Elmer Bucher book. Sadly, it doesn't give much in the way of date information for the various topics. One of the adverts at the back has a 1921 date which seems odd for a book with a 1920 date.

http://www.archive.org/stream/wirele...ge/n4/mode/2up

There's some good stuff in this old Marconi book (below) dated around WW1 with lots of dates vs milestones in radio design. Note: Elmer Bucher who wrote the above radio ham guide is listed in the Marconi book as the Director of Instruction at the Marconi Institute.
https://archive.org/stream/manualofm...ge/68/mode/2up

In the USA hams refer to a tutor as an 'Elmer' and I guess this is where the name came from?

[trh01uk]

And a bit more digging on scopes reveals that General Radio again was ahead of the field, with the model 497A scope, with a separate power supply type 496A - see attached. Those came out in 1931.

However, to call the model 497A an "oscilloscope" is a bit far-fetched. It is no more than a CRT in a box, with a power unit. No Y amps or timebase. By 1932 though, you could buy a timebase in a separate box - the "Bedell Sweep Circuit" type 506A. Apparently that could provide a full sweep across the whole tube up to 2000c/s, and about half the tube with up to 8000c/s. Given it took some 300V for the CRT available, I suppose that's not bad for such early technology.

Richard